


plastic can try

by birbteef



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Gore, Homophobia, M/M, Monster Cecil, Monster sex, Pegging, Robot Sex, Slurs, Tentacles, Violence, its bad communication, not having control over your own body/actions, robot bullying idk what the term is for that, robot carlos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-01-17 00:21:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 15,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1367086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birbteef/pseuds/birbteef
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Android Carlos learns how to function in society and use science as an actual tool while Cecil figures him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hello! supermarket! I require food.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be both my first sfw fic and my first multi-chapter fic. I hope you enjoy it, its supposed to just be a light hearted and fun robots and monsters AU. thanks to daftalchemist for beta on all chapters.

Carlos had sat in pieces, unconscious, for his first few days in Night Vale. He was assembled and turned on soon after the lab was set up; coming online to a small room with very few windows and lots of tired scientists huddled around him, muttering different things in tongues his processors weren’t updated to understand. They plugged him into the wall, letting him charge as they plugged in various cords and wires, installing system requirements and important files.

He became self-aware the next day. He had arms, legs, a torso and head like the other scientists, though he was connected by a series of cords in his back to a box in the corner of the room. The scientists asked him questions that he could now understand with the help of speech recognition software, and he answered them slowly, stuttering and jerking around with the words till they were done making adjustments and he could pull out a decent sentence. 

Apparently this wasn’t good enough, and soon they started doing things to him. They unplugged him, and put clothes on him. They asked him why he referred to himself as ‘him’ if he was genderless, but Carlos just thought it was the correct thing to do seeing as he had a male name and physique. They shrugged and let it slide as additional programming.

They let him out of the room, gave him protocols so he would stop taking his clothes off if he felt too warm, and let him go get groceries as the first task to see if their programming worked. He only made it so far before a strange man screeched at him and ran over, grabbing his hand and shaking it, saying he hoped to see him at the conference that night. Carlos didn’t say a word and stood there as the odd man ran off again shouting something about the weather and time differences.  
He knocked on the door of the supermarket, waiting to be let in as his protocol on manners directed him. The doors slid open but he didn’t understand if this meant he was allowed inside, or if they were just cooling off the inside of the building similar as he did when he opened his back panel to let out heat. He knocked again and a yellow-eyed woman stumbled over to him and asked what was wrong, if he needed help. He explained to her gently that he was trying to hack this door to let him inside this building, so he could gather essential eating materials and other necessary items they needed for everyday functionality.

She nodded and walked inside the building, leaving him bewildered at her ability to just be let inside of buildings at her own command. He knocked harder and beeped at the door, not getting a response. Obviously the door hated him. He stood there, asking the store if it wouldn’t just please let him inside because he didn’t want to disappoint the humans on his first outing, till he felt his battery run dry. It was only two hours, and there was a lab tech tracking him down according to the words that flashed up on screen of his glasses. He sat down in despair, he had failed his task and it was this door’s fault.

The lab tech arrived soon after, giving him a worried look and asking what was wrong, and how exactly he had failed and why was there a dent in the door. Carlos explained the situation, and she had the gall to laugh at him. He looked at her, crestfallen and wary while she took his hand, leading him inside the door. He gasped and looked around; the protocols were entirely different for this building. He asked her why this building was a slut and she made a strange noise, telling him that letting people in and out as they please is not the definition of slut, regardless of what Scott says. She then told him not to say that word, and most certainly not to call people or things that. She then stalled and thought for a moment, and told him he wasn’t allowed to use that word at all. Ever. Carlos nodded and promised her he wouldn’t.

She lead him to the car, putting his seatbelt on and explaining why he needed to wear one even if he couldn’t die of being ripped to shreds in a terrible crash. He had powered off by the time they reached the lab. She got some of the other scientists to get his heavy metal and plastic body out of the car, plugging him into the computer and checking the data he’d collected. Most of them laughed at his actions but then reworked a few lines of code here and there. They realized he didn’t know the name of the woman who came to help him, as she was labelled “NICE_LADY%_;_NO_SLUT%” in his data banks. She was renamed to “Jamiya”.

He woke a half hour later, new code telling him how to fix his actions. Jamiya was a nice lady, and he decided he liked her. He sat there charging for a few moments longer before deciding to ask the building where everyone was. The building gave him a soft “beep boop” in reply and he realized they were probably at the meeting that man mentioned earlier. He figured it was probably nice. He opened up the wifi to ask the great god Google what a science meeting did, and then closed it abruptly as he did not care enough about any of the topics that came up.

He leaned to the side, resting against the wall and hoped the next task they gave him would go better.


	2. Hello! Cecil! Hello! Radio Station!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to Daftalchemist for beta

The next morning he restarted, booting up in the corner of the lab as the scientists poured each other coffee and joked about the meeting last night. He gestured to one of the scientists to call them over, asking about the meeting and what it entailed, delivering the information that the great god Google was entirely unhelpful.

They told him to stop referring to Google as a great god, and maybe that he shouldn’t listen to Scott so much. He frowned and noted that his question went unanswered, so he waved another lab tech over, repeating the same information, and they replied with something about needing to fix his intonation issues as he still sounded jumpy and jerky.

That answered his question even less than the first tech did. He forced a frown at them and they stared back at him, forcibly trying not to laugh. He slumped back to the floor, fiddling with his wires before resigning himself to just watching the scientists move around the building.  
Some of them looked like they were doing important things, yelling at each other or hitting buttons on boxes. Some of them read papers and others just stood there, staring at something. He beeped at the building and the building beeped back. At least someone was there for him.  
A few hours of this passed. He charged with the box and the scientists paid him little attention, unless he did something offensive, at which point they gave him a new protocol to not do that anymore. The first protocols he had received were to stop taking his clothes off at random moments. At first he had done this because he was overheating, and didn’t realize to open his back vents, and then other instances because he just didn’t know what else to do and got the closest equivalent of bored he could be.

Other protocols were to not dig through the trash, not to move the books around, not to screech dial-up tones at the lab interns to judge their surprise effect, not to screech dial-up tones in general because “you aren’t even landline”, not to mess with the fish, not to mess with the fish tank, not to stick his hand in water, especially not the water of the fish tank, and more as they built up.

He felt like he was learning things, becoming more human with new knowledge of what to do and what not to do. Humans didn’t do this and humans didn’t do that, so obviously he was learning how to become a productive individual.

Then they sent him to the radio station.

He had new programming and experience from the incident at the supermarket, and when he knocked on the door of the radio station he expected no reply. He would wait 15 seconds and then just entered as they said he could.

Instead a sharp hold took him, seeping through his arm and arcing through his circuits all over his body, sparking electricity and freezing him for a few seconds till a very archaic and old voice entered his mind, speaking slowly in a language he didn’t understand. He stepped back from the door, feeling fear for the first time till the voice calmed and said, “we will receive you.”  
The doors swung open, leading into a dark and foreboding hallway that Carlos decided immediately he did not want to go down.

He did regardless, having an order to go test radiation levels that the team would not test themselves due to the possibility of radiation poisoning. He opened the panels on his back, letting out the heat that had built up in the charge the door had given him. He was pleasantly surprised that he was also at full battery now, and for some reason his language center now recognized ancient Slavic and Sumerian, yet had forgotten Portuguese, and had renamed the language in his data banks to “WEIRD_SPANISH%”.

The hallway lit up as he moved through it, the lights recognizing that there was a presence in the hall. Doorways leading off to the sides came into view, marked in strange symbols and words. The only ones he recognized were the break room and the recording booth, which had a bright ON AIR sign lit above it.

He let himself into the break room, not wanting to knock on anything in the building again. He was pleasantly surprised at how…normal it seemed. Of course there were intense levels of radiation everywhere, and the floor was covered in unmarked mass graves of interns, but other than that it was pleasant. A coffee maker in the corner next to a water cooler full of ice and no water, a desk with papers and ID badges of people who weren’t at the station yet, keys to some room tossed on the side of the counter. It reminded Carlos of the break room that he wasn’t allowed to enter at the lab.

He heard the door open behind him and turned suddenly, face-to-face with the man from yesterday. He stared wide-eyed at Carlos for a moment before an enormous grin split his face. Carlos hadn’t realized it yesterday because of how brief their meeting had been, but he couldn’t actually focus on what this man registered as. With most people, the grid he shot out and information he received back was similar to echolocation, and he was able to understand the curves and contours of someone’s face and body. It was the easiest way to see for an entity that literally couldn’t see.

This man, however, didn’t give back a solid grid. It wobbled and shifted, sometimes short and sometimes tall, the face constantly warping and moving to a new position to scatter the data. Yet there was always a constant underneath, like something was wearing a human meat suit.  
He realized he and this man had been staring at each other for roughly 45 seconds before Carlos stuck his hand out, and the man smiled at it. He introduced himself as Cecil Palmer, and took Carlos’s hand. He didn’t shake it, or slap it, he just held onto it, as though it was the dearest and most precious thing he had ever had the honor to hold. Carlos didn’t mind because he didn’t know he was supposed to mind.

Cecil never questioned why he was there, only took him into the recording booth to show him around, where the topic of why he was actually there came up. Cecil laughed at the idea of radiation in this studio while Carlos measured the radiation levels that were slowly building the closer he got to the microphone.

Carlos told Cecil that he should probably leave the building, to which Cecil laughed as though he was at a grand country party with rich old white men drinking wine and playing croquet: forced and awkward.

Carlos left soon after, returning to the lab with Cecil’s home phone number, cell phone number and email address on a piece of paper next to a ton of hearts. The door charged him again as he passed through it, and he gave it a thank you. It meowed back a reply.

The scientists thought this story was hilarious and passed around the note to each other, calling Carlos things that he didn’t really care for.

That night he sat on the floor, charging again and beeped at the ceiling. The ceiling beeped back.


	3. Hello! Yard work! Hello! Hello!

The next day, he didn’t restart till mid-morning when the techs forceibly unplugged him, jarring his systems online in a panic-inducing emergency situation. They jokingly patted him on the back and told him to stop freaking out, and that he was overreacting to the situation.

Carlos didn’t find it nearly as funny and took several minutes to calm down, his circuits running hot with the forced boot.

Resentment wasn’t an emotion that he had felt thus far in his short life, but he resented these scientists in that immediate moment. They hit his back some more and told him to call Cecil, try and set up an interview with him while they go play around with some house that doesn’t exist.

\--

They left him with a set of tasks to do; cleaning the lab and the grounds outside the lab were the majority of it. He mowed, raked, washed the communal van, washed the windows and the floors, vacuumed inside the lab, vacuumed outside the lab for lack of knowing how a vacuum worked, broke the vacuum, buried the vacuum, until finally, an he needed to do was set up a call with Cecil.

He picked grit out of the casing on his arms, folding back the synthetic skin to dig at the grime working outside had built up. He didn’t know if the techs were supposed to clean him or if he was supposed to clean himself, but he supposed he could clean himself more regularly if he really had to. He picked the grime and left it in front of Scott’s desk, cleaning out more as he dialed Cecil’s number in his head.

The familiar voice picked up the phone groggily, as if he had just woken up. Carlos realized this was probably because Cecil had stayed up late for some reason, Carlos had probably woken him and he felt guilty.

He cleared his throat and tried his best to keep his intonation smooth, as he knew that he only had his voice here, and not his actions to help guide him through the conversation. “Hello, CecIL. I am not CALLING for personal reasons. This is C.A.RL.os.* We have met.”

The groggy voice sharpened immediately, turning warm in a way Carlos could feel melt through the wires in his head, filling him with Cecil’s audible happiness. “Oh, Carlo,. Carlos, yes. Oh, why are you calling? You’ve caught me in such a state, I’m not even up yet, please forgive me.”

Carlos smiled involuntarily, “I’m suppOSED to interview you. For science. It is IMPORTANT. I would like to meet you.”

Cecil gasped and made a noise as if he were dying, and Carlos began to scan the noises for any signs of struggle or vulnerability before Cecil screeched, “OH, CARLOS I WOULD LOVE TO GO ON A DATE WITH YOU!”

Carlos frowned. What the hell was a date? Carlos had no plans on giving Cecil fruit. “That is not the query I HAVE PROPOSED, please restate your current situation in relation to the topic.”

Cecil sighed dreamily on the other end of the line, faint thumping was heard from where he was getting dressed. “Meet me at the Gastro Pub on Clementine, say…directly after my show? I’d love to meet you. Please show up. I know you’re new in town and I can show you all kinds of wonderful things here.”

Carlos wasn’t entirely sure this was what the scientists wanted him to do, but he personally couldn’t object to it. In fact it sounded…nice, in a way. Cecil was pretty much the only person besides Jamiya who didn’t really boss him around or think him weird simply for existing as a robot in a place that had not trained him how to be otherwise. He decided he liked Cecil, and agreed to the meeting.

The techs and the scientists didn’t return home that evening. It worried Carlos, and on occasion he would beep at the lab. The lab always beeped back. He made a list of the people who seemed to take him seriously if he needed something. It was Jamiya, the lab, a small handful of lab techs, the mailman Scott lied to about Carlos having palsy, and Cecil. He didn’t find anything odd about that at first, but then moved Cecil up the list. Sure, they had only talked three times, but in those three were two of the best conversations of his short life.

He wondered if Cecil talked to his radio station. He thought the station liked him, and it was certainly more articulate than the lab was. He hoped Cecil was nice to the radio station, talked to it on occasion and let it know it was liked.

The scientists came back one by one, trickling in and putting their things away, then leaving after. They didn’t acknowledge him, or if they did it was just a general “Hey robot, shut the lights off when everyone’s gone.” He beeped at the lab, and the lab beeped back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *C.A.RL.os. stands for Constant, Automatic, Remote Location, Operating System.  
> \--  
> There's a date next chapter.  
> EDIT: I wanted to ask, and please answer in the comments, this story in and of itself will be safe for work throughout, with the tag raising later on for gore/horror because of how the plot goes. but im wondering if anyone would be interested in something nsfw as a side fic?


	4. Hello Gastropub Date I am trying my best.

Carlos locked the building and left to meet Cecil once he was sure all the scientists were done coming back to the lab. He had pulled Jamiya to the side and told her what he was going to do, asking her what a date was because Google’s description of it was entirely too confusing.

She had given him a very confused look that changed into a sad smile, telling him that he probably shouldn’t mention this to Scott or any of the other scientists really. Carlos questioned her as to how he was supposed to interview Cecil if he wasn’t supposed to mention the encounter. Jamiya took his face in her hands, a gesture Carlos didn’t understand but took to mean he should pay attention. She gave him some of the most important advice he’d gotten so far.

She told him sometimes, people will tell him things they don’t actually mean for him to do, and sometimes people will tell him to do things that are mean or inappropriate because they think it’s funny. Cecil wasn’t like them, and Carlos wasn’t like them, both for two very different reasons. Carlos never realized that they were taking advantage of his ignorance. He felt anger at them again.

Jamiya then explained to him that it was weird that Cecil was a guy asking Carlos on a date, and that’s why they took the note and laughed at Cecil giving Carlos his number. The concept of sexuality and preferences and the whole idea behind sex in general was new and confusing, but Jamiya said she would explain it later, and told him to go have fun tonight.

Carlos knew now there was no interview, there was no motive other than for him to make a fool of himself for the scientists to laugh at and call him a stupid robot.

He locked the lab door, beeping as he left the porch. The lab beeped back.

He had charged before he left, knowing he had two hours of battery before he would have to be back at the lab. The walk was nice. The temperature was pleasant; a cool break from the heat of the sun. The pub was on an alley, and the dark warped around it like it was a shining beacon of light, the only thing fending off the night despite the fact it was surrounded by other buildings.

Carlos felt himself pulled into it, his circuits jumping and meaningless blasts of code running through his system as he spotted Cecil in a corner. He walked slowly, the grid he used to see was flashing and darting everywhere Cecil was, the field of influence shifting around till Cecil turned to greet him, at which point it stilled, and only Cecil himself was the unclear thing.

“Oh, Carlos, it’s so good to see you again. I didn’t know what to wear or when to order so I arrived early out of panic.”

Carlos smiled and took a seat across from Cecil. “I’m…not late?”

Cecil shook his head, taking a sip of something in a white ceramic mug. “No, no, Carlos, you could never be late, don’t worry about that.”

Carlos frowned. That didn’t really seem to make a lot of sense. He tried to control his vocal functions but a wobbly “I…CecIL I CAN be late, I run on a linear time SCALE just as you do.”

Cecil laughed and rested his chin on his hand, propped up by an elbow on the table. “You’re so funny, and scientific. I like that.”

Carlos nodded and looked down, realizing there was a piece of plastic in front of him. He pointed to it questioningly and looked at Cecil. “What is this?”

“The burger?”

“The plasTIC.”

Cecil stared at him for a long moment, trying to understand what Carlos just said. “The…menu?”

“Yes.”

Cecil raised his eyebrows and said nothing, just looking back up and down at Carlos and the menu. After it was clear Carlos expected some kind of answer he waved his hand at it. “It’s a menu, Carlos. You order food off of it.”

Carlos stared at him again in complete confusion until, thankfully, the waitress came and asked him what he wanted to eat. His system of sight wouldn’t let him see any print, just the flat plane of the plastic menu on a gridded surface. He pointed at random to the page in panic and the waitress nodded, taking the plastic away from him. He realized immediately that he needed to talk to someone about installing written word processing software, because illiterate robots can’t function in a literate world. 

“I wouldn’t really have pinned you down for that kind of guy, I must say,” Cecil muttered after a moment.

Carlos didn’t know what else to do to get himself out of this other than say, “I am not a kind of guy, Cecil. I am a scientist. A scientist knows what menus are. A SCIENTIST is smart. I am smart.”

Cecil gave him a dreamy sigh. “I did always have a thing for bad boys….”

Carlos frowned loudly. “I am not bad. I FUNCTION perfectly fine and am at optimum working order. I request you retract your statement.”

Cecil squealed at Carlos while the waitress returned with a burger and fries for Cecil, and a salad for Carlos.

Carlos panicked at the immediate realization that he would actually have to eat and pay for the food he just ordered.

Cecil dug into his burger, eating quickly as if he hadn’t eaten much that day. Carlos figured it was reasonable to assume he may have had a long day at work and had skipped out on his lunch. HHe wouldn’t have guessed the truth was Cecil didn’t want to upset Carlos anymore and thus was shoving his face full of fries and burger in order to stop himself from talking.

Carlos looked dismally at his salad, picking up his fork like he saw the lab techs do, and pushed the lettuce around on the plate.

“Carlos, are you ok?” Cecil asked after he was halfway done with his burger, noticing the distress this poor, confused scientist in front of him was experiencing.

Carlos didn’t want to admit what was wrong. He had gone this far without Cecil knowing he wasn’t human, and he didn’t want to ruin that. It wasn’t that Carlos wanted to be human, on the whole he really couldn’t care less about humanity and fitting in with them, but as soon as Cecil knew he was a robot, Carlos was positive he would treat him differently. The absolute last thing Carlos wanted was for Cecil to change how he thought of Carlos because so far, other than Jamiya, Cecil was the nicest person Carlos knew.

“I…don’t want these leaves,” he muttered.

“Why did you order them?”

“I didN’T know what else TO GET”

Cecil sighed and pulled the waitress aside, asking to get a box for the salad, then turned back to Carlos. “You can’t pay for that either, can you?”

Carlos shamefully shook his head no.

Cecil ate the rest of his burger in silence, not looking back up at Carlos while Carlos panicked. “Y-you’ll have to pay for it, WONT YOU?”

Cecil nodded and finally looked up. Instead of the anger that Carlos had expected, he only saw kindness and compassion, maybe a small amount of pity as well. “We have a lot to talk about, Carlos.” Cecil said after a moment. “I suspect we have a lot more in common than you think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you see anything you want me to add to the tags, please let me know. This is a more heavy chapter.


	5. Fish

Carlos waited patiently by the door while Cecil paid for the food. Cecil hadn’t said another word after his last admittance, and had tried to get out of the gastro pub as soon as possible. He gently took Carlos by the hand and led him out, walking to the neighboring apartment complex.

He only let go of Carlos once they were inside one of the apartments, a smaller one on ground level. Carlos thought the place was cluttered and eclectic; there were so many things stacked on top of each other, and there was no rhyme or reason to any of the objects found in there. He wished he had color imaging so he could see what he was actually looking at in this mess of an apartment.

Cecil shut the door softly behind him, but Carlos didn’t hear the sound of a deadbolt which put him more at ease. “Oh Carlos, what are you?” he asked softly, his voice even and gentle.

Carlos looked back at Cecil, something about the ease of the question calming Carlos, but still he was nervous enough that he didn’t want to answer. “You won’t... YOU WON’T like me anymore, Cecil.”

Cecil laughed, sitting on one of his couches and gesturing that Carlos take the seat next to him. Carlos did, hesitantly, after a moment. 

“Carlos, perfect, sweet, Carlos. I want to show you something.” Cecil said, and took Carlos’ hand gently. Cecil’s hand was much smaller than Carlos’, and his fingers were wispy and delicate, fragile and thin. He brought Carlos’ hand to his chest, sliding it up to where his heart should be and looked at Carlos.

Carlos didn’t understand what he was being shown until he actually paid attention to the heartbeat. Unlike the two thumps of a four chambered heart that humans normally had it was a rapid four count “THU-THU-THU-THU” of each valve closing individually and sending off to the next chamber.

“Like a fish,” Carlos commented after a moment, sliding his hand around on Cecil’s chest to feel it.

Cecil laughed again, taking Carlos’ hand away from his chest. “I would prefer if you didn’t call me a fish, its rather…rude.” He stroked the back of Carlos’s hand with his thumb. “You don’t have to hide from me. I’ve hidden plenty of times from plenty of people. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise you that with everything I have. I’m no more human than you are.”

Carlos beeped softly and Cecil made a confused face at the noise, not sure where it came from.

Carlos shrugged off the lab coat he had been using to cover his arms. His synthetic skin stopped at his forearms, as well as around his shoulders so he only looked human when he wore long sleeves to cover himself. Cecil gasped, the idea that this man technically wasn’t even living in the first place most likely had never even crossed his mind.

Carlos refused to look at Cecil, keeping his eyes down for fear of Cecil’s reaction.

“Can I touch you?” Cecil asked a moment later.

“What?”

“Can I touch you?”

Carlos wasn’t sure what that meant by that but he nodded regardless. Cecil’s hands started at the wrists of his synthetic skin, sliding upwards and glossing his fingertips over the edge to the metal. “Can you feel this?” he asked, moving his hands up more.

Carlos shook his head. “I haVE NO PHYsical sensory functions.”

“That’s amazing,” Cecil murmured, getting up to the point where Carlos’s t-shirt covered him. He sat back, staring at this wonder before him in awe. “Carlos, you’re amazing.”

The lab techs and the scientists had called him several things in the short period of time he had been alive, but “amazing” was never one of those things. In fact, that probably was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. He put his coat back on and folded his hands in his lap, looking back up at Cecil. “Am…I really?”

Cecil nodded enthusiastically.

“What are you? THEN?” Carlos asked after.

Cecil paused, thinking of the best way to go about explaining it. “Well, my mother was into some very unfortunate things. She wasn’t human herself; some kind of dentist I think. I don’t know, I don’t really remember much about her. My father on the other hand is some old god who likes to get drunk on the weekends and go party with earth women. They won't tell me which one it is though im pretty sure it’s” he broke into some strangled noise followed by a hacking wheeze “so there’s that. Regardless, I’ve never met him and I’m halfway between him and my mother.”

Carlos didn’t follow. “So you’re a fish.”

Cecil scowled. “I’m not a fish, I’m barely even an amphibian. Certainly not a mammal though, thank the gods.” He brushed a hand through his hair, and then the grid solidified. Carlos could see his face, undistorted by whatever presence he was using to affect his image. He was horrific. Carlos fell in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank again to Daftalchemist for beta. I keep forgetting to say that but they've been so helpful and have given me lots of editing.  
> \--  
> An image of how robolos looks: http://soupengine.deviantart.com/art/Untitled-1-18-444395708


	6. Hello! laboratory, I'm home did you miss me?

They had spent the night talking. Carlos was infinitely curious about Cecil; his physiology and manifestations confused and amazed the android. Cecil had wanted to explore Carlos as well, but had sensed Carlos’ unease and held back, letting Carlos trail his fingers along Cecil’s being.

Carlos was scared. He was nervous and curious and in love with this being in front of him which for never feeling such an emotion before, scared him. Cecil had manifested, showing his true monstrous self to Carlos, and it was the most wonderful thing Carlos had ever seen. He certainly wasn’t human, but whatever he was, he was dear to Carlos. Gentle, kind, compassionate and wonderful. 

Carlos wrapped one of the tentacles around his fingers, pulling it lightly this way and that simply to test out the flexibility of the rubbery thing while they talked of meaningless things. The mood was relaxed, and so were they. Cecil grew tired and content, while Carlos’s battery slowly wound down.

Carlos pressed his face to Cecil’s chest, leaning on him as Cecil lay back on the couch, wrapping arms and tentacles around the robot. It was nice to have each other understand so much and yet so little simply by existing there together.

Carlos beeped at Cecil’s apartment. The room was silent, there was no response.

Carlos’ battery died.

\--

He woke slowly the next morning. The sun was shining softly through the windows and lit up the lab more than the florescent lights did. The sound of bustling and working scientists filled the room. Sensors told him the smell of coffee and Cecil’s cologne were around, if he could smell them. He opened his eyes, the ever shifting and wobbling face that Cecil wore to hide himself was sitting next to him, playing a game on his cell phone.

Carlos smiled, tapping Cecil’s knee gently with the back of his hand. Cecil immediately dropped what he was doing to pay attention to Carlos, grabbing his hands and asking if he was ok. It made Carlos so incredibly happy that this weird radio personality was here in the lab with him, asking if he was ok that he couldn’t find the process code to respond, only smiled and nodded. Cecil smiled back and a slur of words from Scott off in the corner caught them both off guard as he stormed out.

Cecil stood up immediately and glared at the area where Scott had trudged off to, while Carlos looked down and realized he had been stripped of his clothes at some point. He was smooth, metallic, without genitals or extraneous features. He supposed he looked very odd, just a metal body wearing human gloves and a mask. He hoped Cecil wouldn’t mind.

Cecil grumbled unintelligibly and sat back down, looking concerned for Carlos. He asked what happened, because Carlos had just passed out and hadn’t responded to anything Cecil tried doing to wake him up. The lab hadn’t opened till seven--Carlos’ clock read it was seven thirty--so Cecil ran around with his passed out scientist robot trying to fix him all night, and he appeared horribly tired for it.

This concerned Carlos in a way he didn’t really understand. Cecil was hurting himself and his circadian rhythm for Carlos, and it really bothered him. He told Cecil this and was given a laugh and brought in for a hug in response. Cecil told him he was just glad that Carlos was ok, and that Jamiya had helped him out so wonderfully.

Carlos scanned the room for her, finding her off in the computer area giving a lab tech some advice, or maybe just talking. He wasn’t really sure, but she seemed to be busy. He’d have to thank her later.

Scott stormed back through the room, pulling a set of mobile lab gear from the wall and putting it on, grumbling about “stupid fucking robot” again. Carlos knew Cecil couldn’t hear it because Cecil was still talking about how he had dragged Carlos’s body to the lab, and the techs had stripped him down and plugged him into the wall.

Which was when Carlos realized his entire back hatch was open.

He reached his arm back to try and fiddle with the innards and got a sharp wordless yell from Scott across the room, followed by a “don’t fuckin’ touch that! I spent forever getting your battery back online!”

Carlos didn’t understand how his battery could go offline if it could just recharge. He chalked it up to robotics he didn’t understand and watched as Scott stormed out of the lab, slamming the door in a great huff.

Carlos turned to Cecil, who had a very worried expression on what little of his face he could comprehend. “Carlos,” Cecil said after a moment. “He means well…maybe. If he…does anything to you, tell me, or someone, alright?”

Carlos stared at him in confusion. “Rephrase thE STATEMent. Dr. Scott PR#22i8-8 is a resident scientist, and as such has full access tO me.”

Cecil shook his head. “I was talking Jamiya, she said he gives you trouble, and now I can see that’s the case.”

Carlos certainly didn’t, that was really the only way he knew Scott to act, but he trusted Cecil and Jamiya to make good decisions he couldn’t.

“I’m just…Carlos, please listen: even if he has access to your code or hardware, he shouldn’t treat you like that, do you understand?”

Carlos shook his head, and Cecil worried his lower lip between his teeth.

“I mean more like…like if he hurts you. He wouldn’t be allowed to say the things he says to human coworkers, and yet he says them to you freely because he thinks you don’t understand what they mean.”

“I don’t think I do understand what they mean if THIS IS as much of an issue as You SAY IT IS.”

“Do you like what he says about you? What he says to you? Had he tried to- gah, Carlos I know you haven’t really even been alive for a full week. This is ridiculous, don’t you understand that?”

“No?”

“You are amazing. Carlos, you are a fully sentient and emotionally responsive artificial intelligence. You have feelings, emotions, an active state of mind, and I’m- I’m so worried about him hurting you. I’m not the only one either; did you see how the lab atmosphere relaxed as soon as he left?”

Carlos shook his head

“Well…be careful with him, is all im saying. Please, Carlos. You have the functionality to make decisions as well as a perfectly normal and well adapted adult. I talked to Jamiya all about it because I was worried about taking advantage of you myself. Don’t let someone hurt you because you don’t know better, especially not someone like him.”

The words struck Carlos in an odd way. Cecil honestly cared about him, not because he was expensive equipment, or had a nicely molded face, but because he liked who Carlos actually was, and liked being around him. Carlos smiled softly and squeezed Cecil’s hand. Cecil patted him on the back and stood up, saying something along the lines of having to get to work on time.

Carlos beeped at the lab. The lab beeped back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cecil isnt going to let any self obsessed white boy ruin Carlos.  
>  Carlos isn't either, but he needs to learn more.
> 
> \--  
> art for this chapter: http://25.media.tumblr.com/095a187d675dc67e93eceedda90b6d9f/tumblr_mydutkFXgw1szr783o1_500.png
> 
> also general art: http://soupengine.deviantart.com/art/fall-with-me-442454139


	7. I miss...I miss

Cecil ate like an animal, teeth ripping into soft meat and tearing at the flesh as juices dripped down his chin, only for him to wipe at it and grab for more with his jaws. Pieces were torn off one by one till there was nothing left. His hands were as bloody as his mouth by the time it was over.

The darkness crept up slowly, coiling around and shifting, ever changing alongside him as he replaced what he used to be. The floor creaked and the walls bent outwards to hold his mass within their structures. At the end of the day this form was what he was.

He breathed and the station breathed with him, a deep breath that fueled the pulse of the town that so many relied on. All except the robot; odd he was the only one who really knew Cecil.

He struggled, and pulled himself back together piece by piece, making sure he fit correctly. Certain things had to go in certain places, else the humans got upset. He had seen Carlos deal with that, had seen Carlos’ confusion at the unease of the people around him when he did things that people very much did not do.

He knew Carlos wanted to belong here just as much as he did, and that Carlos knew far less than he did about how to belong here. He wanted nothing more than to help him, show him that he could be just as useful and good as the humans were.

The darkness slipped out behind him. He pulled it back in, heaving its weight up into the human form.

He certainly wasn’t one of those monsters who despised humanity. He liked humans a lot, in fact. His best friends were human, his neighbors and coworkers. Because of this the themes he saw humans make in media got old so fast for him.The sheer amount of movies about monsters destroying New York or attacking helpless people in the middle of the night always failed to take into account what the monster actually wanted.

The thought crossed his mind that he didn’t want Carlos to see any of that. He didn’t want Carlos to know why they were all potentially afraid of him. Carlos was sweet, kind and caring, learning and growing to become someone important and independent. He didn’t need to be exposed to the stale tropes of what humans thought he would do if they wronged him.

No, Cecil was fairly confident that Carlos wouldn’t hurt anyone. They had talked, and Carlos had only been amazed by what very little of Cecil he actually saw. There was no fear there because no one had told him he should have fear there.

He picked up the plate, the blood running off the sides as he slipped it into the dishwasher, plastered on a smile and stepped out the door, greeting the moon for another night. He was seeing Carlos again.

\--

Scott was a terrifying man. Carlos had databases for research and understanding different things, he had looked into aggression and the words that Scott had screamed at him as soon as Cecil left. He had been threatened with dismantlement, crossed wires and shorted circuits, electrocution and magnetic data wiping. Scott had told him it would be easy, and Carlos didn’t disagree with him.

Carlos knew how perfectly finite his existence was, even more so than humans at times. Humans could bend and break, bleed and exploit each other, and somehow still find a way to come back stronger with time and healing. He was metal and plastic, code wrapped up in magnets and circuits. A keystroke and a few lines of programming and he could be someone else entirely. They had chosen to make him able to think and learn about the processes of the world around him, so he would be curious and inviting.

Scott could easily change that at any point he wanted. Carlos was afraid of him; actively afraid, because he knew Scott could so easily change so much about him. But more afraid of what it made him. Carlos thought he was independent and free, an individual all to his own. If he could be manipulated and warped, who was to say his current being was really all that unique? 

He was jealous of humans, in a way. They had all their lives to grow up and turn into unique people, getting shaped by the world around them. Carlos was nice because he was programmed to be nice. He was smart, curious, gentle, all because someone had sat at a computer and said he would be. He hadn’t gotten to choose anything about himself except what he looked like. Even then he hadn’t really had a choice; they’d showed him a few different pictures and had just told him to pick one. He supposed that one was a little more acceptable: no one ever chose to be born as the way they were.

Jamiya had been sent home. Carlos hadn’t heard why, just something about a mind sickness and only speaking in purple clouds. One of his lifelines had been cut, and he was slowly running out of resources.

He let out a simulated sigh and leaned against the wall in his corner. The lab was dark and Cecil would be there soon. He beeped softly at the lab. The lab beeped gently back.

A glowing light dimmed above him as the lab sunk down into sleep.

He beeped at the lab again, needing to know something was still there for him besides Cecil. 

The lab beeped back, kind and caring. As sentient as an in-house system could be to something of its own kind. The lab was in no more control of itself than Carlos was. It gave him a sudden shock through his power cable where he was plugged into the wall, sending sparks up through his system in a gentle tickle, and in his head he heard “Child, Cecil is here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't update because I didn't think anyone was really actually following this story, I'm sorry. some people contacted me at my tumblr, and I can assure you I'm going to finish it, it just may take some time.


	8. Hello! sandstORM!?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is not any real timeline thats comparable to the show here. I plan to keep the events the same, they're just going to be in a different order so they work in this story.

When they went out that night, it was a much more relaxed meeting than their first few had been. Idly strolling through the streets, Cecil pointed at the shops and calmly explained what each one was, as Carlos still didn’t have any word recognition software installed. While he may not have been able to understand the signs out front, he was certainly more than able to pinpoint on his GPS what each and every thing Cecil told him about was to come back to for future use.

They stopped outside a small department store, sitting on a bench between a trashcan and a brick wall. They had been talking about little things: what science Carlos was doing in the lab, how many interns Cecil had yet to send off. Their conversation slowly came to a lull, both of them staring off at the sunset on the horizon.

Carlos felt Cecil’s head on his shoulder after a while. He realized he didn’t know when Cecil had put it there, or how long it had been there in the first place. It was…it was so nice though. Nice enough that he would willingly defy whatever Scott told him to do and be here with Cecil any time, and any day.

“It’s…lovely,” Carlos said after a moment.

Cecil nodded against his shoulder, content to rest there. “It is, isn’t it? I don’t know how much you can actually see. The sunset isn’t…particularly dramatic, but its calm, peaceful. Certainly not pyrokinetic. However…it isn’t bad.”

A fuzzy dark fog rolled in slowly on the horizon, creeping closer to the town. Carlos was the first one to notice it, and they both sat there, watching this storm slowly move in.

“That’s a sandstorm,” Cecil said uneasily after a moment.

Carlos turned to him, not quite understanding why he sounded so uneasy. “Isn’t THAT…Cecil there shouldn’t be ANYTHing particularly upsetting about a SANDstorm.”

Cecil shrugged. “Normally, no. They generally just mean its hard to drive and you feel dust in your nose and throat even if you’re indoors with the windows closed. The grit and sand get everywhere, Carlos…please stay inside.”

“Any particular rEASON?”

“You have…you’re delicate. Not in the traditional sense, but in a sense that throwing handfuls of sand at you would be detrimental.”

Carlos nodded, already knowing it was hard enough to get sand out of his mechanical parts as it was without it flying through the air at him.

Cecil took his hand and led him back, trying to hurry before the storm got in. His phone buzzed just as they were getting back to the lab. “Aagh, I have to work night shift. You go in, I’ll talk to you later.” He dropped Carlos’s hand and winked, walking in the other direction.

Carlos sighed and stepped into the lab, greeting the building with a beep and receiving one as well. He sat in his corner and plugged himself in, watching the lab techs scurry about doing their science.

His knees tucked up to his chin and he waited. It hadn’t been long before the wind picked up and started rattling against the windows. He could see the flag outside was almost perfectly flat with the gusts that swept through night vale. The sand sounded like soft white noise, individually it would have been silent but the noise of thousands of grains crashing into the side of the lab was a dull thrum that threatened to pick up at a moments notice.

Something was off.

Carlos knew he couldn’t get chills, and premonitions weren’t real, even in Night Vale, but the terrible cold feeling that crept into him as the time passed and the storm raged wouldn’t leave regardless. The lab slid up his mind through the charging cord, a soft touch on his nerves. 

It slid around him, soft, gentle. He realized he wasn’t the only nervous one here, and reached out to insert his own influence back to the lab. It was a connection he had never tried before, and found the effects to be quite bizarre. He had sudden access to everything; the lab was completely willing to let him into the mainframe of the whole system.

The thought that he could shut everything down immediately crossed his mind, followed by the horror that he had just thought that, and he pulled out. He stayed there a while, not in the mainframe but in the collective consciousness of them both. It was sort of a modified file share that they both had access to and could stay in while they weren’t needed.

The lab was nice, sweet, and took care of everything he needed. It showed him how to scan for viruses, which he did, and how to use shortcuts to get places in his head faster; analogous to a parental figure teaching their child how to function. The lab itself obviously looked nothing like he did physically, but its software was essentially just a newer and more powerful version of his own. While CARLOS was made to go out and study small things and bring the information back, this massive OS was built to house everything, know everything, and keep everything safe and working effectively.

Carlos had the benefit of additional programs that gave him personality and human interactions, but the lab was the real star of the show as far as the software went.

He thanked the lab after they had spent a while together, withdrawing his influence from it and coming back to his own body in the lab.

Something was off.

And not off like before, but off like there was no one in the lab and he could hear screaming from the back room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to daftalchemist for beta again. I keep forgetting to give credit for that, but they've beta'd every chapter in this thus far.


	9. Hello...me...mine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has a lot of gore/violent imagery in it. while personally its not a problem I know some people are sensitive to that, just be careful.

The lab beeped harshly as he unplugged himself and stood up. On the radio there was a strange man he didn’t recognize, and he quickly shut it off. He didn’t want to go into the backroom, but another round of screaming told him he should.

He slipped along the wall, his back pressed up against the white paneling, and slowly made his way to his destination. The lab beeped harshly at him again and he beeped back in the same manner. He didn’t think this was a good idea any more than the lab did, and the lab probably knew better. 

He turned the corner and was met with something he very much did not expect. The lab techs were huddled in a corner with some of the scientists. There were strange human copies on the floor in pieces, blood and organs spread everywhere and slowly draining into the chemical shower.

Scott and another scientist, Daniel, were in front of some terrifying warp, an undulating orange and green spiral that seemed to lead nowhere, and yet called for everyone to go in. They were poised to attack, Scott with a baseball bat and Daniel with a comically large dissection scalpel in each hand.

A hand came out of the portal, still for a brief moment but followed by a body, one that matched one of the young lab techs. It was grotesque, her smile large and forced with deep gashes stretching to her ears. Her eyes were what caught Carlos’s attention though: they were sunken and as black as sin itself.

Scott immediately hit her with his baseball bat as Daniel moved in to slash at her stomach. She screamed in agony, the repeated scream that Carlos had woken up to. Carlos gasped in horror as she fell, making Scott turn to face him in surprise.

“What are yOU Doing!?” he choked out, not bothering to even try and fix any mechanical jarring that was in his voice.

“So the robot’s awake. Great.” Scott gave him an apathetic stare. “New Protocol, robot, pick up a bat.”

Carlos froze immediately.

There was absolutely nothing he wanted to do less than pick up one of Scott’s bats. Regardless, he felt the function take place and slide into the coding mechanism, and the protocol began to fulfill itself. The metal bat was heavy, filled with something that most weren’t. He knew very little about baseball, that often people would try and make their bats lighter to swing with. This bat surely weighed as much as a large dog.

Scott let Daniel step back, and Carlos took his place, hands clenched tightly around the bat as he stared into the portal.

“ScOTT. Don’t MAKE Me do this,” Carlos said after a moment of silence.

Scott shrugged. “If there’s no more, then you won’t have to.”

Another hand reached out of the portal, this time of one of the senior scientists. Again, Scott was the first to strike, knocking the old man down to the ground with a single blow. Now that Carlos was closer he could see more of the doubles from the portal. They were horrible, a mockery of the people who they were mirrored from.

The protocol activated and he raised the bat, letting it slam down on the double’s head. The sound of crunching bone made Carlos sick. Scott grabbed the body by the ankle and dragged it to the corner with the rest of the bodies.

Carlos looked over. There were so many.

“Do they…HAVE lives?” he whispered.

“What are you on about?”

“The people… Why are they COMING here? Where are THEY FROM? Are WE JUST MURdering THEM?”

Scott laughed and slung his bat around, the blood flinging off in various directions. “Yeah, we’re murdering them, because they were going to murder us, you scrap heap.”

The lab beeped.

“What the fuck were you even doing? We needed you earlier and now there are actual living people dead because you weren’t there to help with the main onslaught of these monsters.”

“They ATTAcked you?” He looked up at a security camera, knowing the lab could see him. “Why did you LET ME sleep?”

“Hey, look alive, robot!” Scott yelled as another came out. This one was dark, lithe, and went for Carlos almost immediately. It screeched and Scott’s swing missed, almost intentionally given his aim up to that point.

Carlos stepped back and swung as well, sending the creature down in a single blow. It was obvious to him that he was stronger than the humans, being made out of metal, but for him to have the capacity to kill something in a single swing? No, he was built for something that wasn’t… right.

A horrible rip tore through the air and the warp collapsed in on itself, tearing through the wall and leaving the smell of sulfur.

Everyone left almost immediately after, giving Carlos instructions for how to clean up before going home to cope with what had happened.

Carlos stared at the pile of bodies. He didn’t want to touch them; he didn’t even want to look at them. If he stayed perfectly still, the protocol wouldn’t activate, and he wouldn’t have to. He knew he couldn’t do that forever though, and slowly walked towards the pile.

He dragged all the bodies to the doorstep, stopping for half an hour to charge himself in the middle.

The body he struck down himself was the last one, and he didn’t want to look at it or move it or do anything to it. The knowledge he had caused this thing’s death, even if it wasn’t of his own violation, struck him deeply. He wanted to talk to Cecil. He wanted to get out of this lab.

He dragged the last body out, face down through the blood trail on the floor, and heaped it up on the pile outside for the SSP to come and collect.

He paused and turned, gently lifting its face to see who it was. It has been smashed in, recognizable features left with the imprint of Scott’s borrowed bat. Yet somehow Carlos knew it was him, which didn’t make much sense at all really, seeing as he wasn’t even alive. Yet here was this flesh and blood specimen in front of him, beaten to a pulp.

He dropped the head. He didn’t want to look at it any more, or think about it. He wanted to call Cecil, but he heard him on the radio signing off. He had turned the radio off earlier.

“Why was mine a human?” he asked the lab.

The lab was silent.


	10. Hello! it isnt fair! LET ME GO LET ME GO

The next morning went by in a blur. The lab was closed for the scientist’s mandatory grief counselling, and Carlos had decided to shut himself off for it. He had wanted to call Cecil but had realized that panicking over things that were just speculation was probably not the best idea, and he really didn’t need to bother him about it.

It still rolled over in his mind again and again. The lab told him that was part of being a robot: you never really forgot no matter how much you wanted to, unless someone made you forget. 

He willfully ignored the lab, not wanting any of the solace or advice it tried to give him. It didn’t really understand what type of uncertainty he was facing with this knowledge. Its beeps grew softer and kinder throughout the morning, messaging him less and less often to try and coax him into explaining what was wrong.

He heard the trucks pick the bodies up around noon. They rapped at the door and marked the entry with blood.

“Why was mine a human?” he asked after they had left. They had taken the body with them. There was no way it could hurt him anymore.

The lab was silent for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Carlos raised his voice. “Why was mine a human!?”

The lab slowly unfurled databanks and offered to let him in. He could feel its discomfort and uneasiness as he slipped in. His body fell into a heap in the corner as his mind wandered around in the database.

The lab sifted around him and once again he felt its sheer power flex the code into what it needed it to be. He felt the files slide past him, worming through encryptions to find whatever the lab was reluctantly showing him.

He came to a file. It was labelled with just his name, plus a last name, and compressed so it would take up less space. The lab unzipped it and laid it out for Carlos, emanating the feeling that it didn’t want him to see it, but was showing it to him because it cared about him.

Carlos paused, thinking it over for another moment before asking, “Will I like what’s in there?”

The lab was swift and blunt with it’s answer. “No.”

\--

Scott was a tired man. He was old, and he was fed up with all the shit Night Vale kept giving him. He wasn’t even supposed to be stationed there. He was supposed to be in New York with his band and dog, but no, instead he was in Satan’s blazing asshole. Sure, the pay was phenomenal, but it had better be when someone on his team had to leave every single day because they were sick, or they had died, or they had become some strange comatose enigma. No, he hated this town. He hated this town and he hated everyone in it.

Everyone in his original crew had died, so instead of pulling them out the company had told him they’d send in more people. That was when he realized that these people were disposable. The company literally didn’t care about what happened to the peons they sent in.

Getting stationed in Night Vale was the highest punishment they would dish out. The sentence was death.

Scott knew what he did to get in here. He had pissed off one of the female higher-ups. It had only been a little sexual harassment, and she sent him here directly.

As the new ones trickled in he always tried to guess what they’d done. Thievery, attempted assault, and spying for other companies were the higher ones.

And yet there was this one man. Scott honestly couldn’t figure out why Carlos was there. Unlike all the others, Carlos worked hard, he tried his best, he was always cheerful and just aggravatingly nice. He was the only one who came without papers, and the only one who seemed to enjoy himself in the training camp outside of town.

The move into town got the new scientists and lab techs uneasy. They’d heard stories and read reports about the town, and all of them knew why they’d been sent there. They hoped they would be some of the lucky few to get sent home with injuries instead of death, or worse. There was always a promise of hope though, if you did well and found out something useful, maybe the company would forgive what you’d done and take you back.

Scott doubted it would ever happen. They would get paid out the ass to die here, and their families and friends would be none the wiser.

So when he got the call from the higher-ups that he would be shipped a robot for extra help to keep them all from dying so fast, and that all he had to do was write an AI for it, he started putting plans together.

Writing the code was the hard part. The lab itself would work as the foundation; the sentient building would offer framework for constructing a personality around easily enough.

Constructing the personality, building a mind, that was the hard part. Years of technology and robotics work and still even the best scientists in the world couldn’t come up with something even close to a real human.

A real human.

A real human with thoughts and feelings, who would willingly and unconditionally do everything that was asked without questioning; that was what Scott was supposed to make.

It was impossible. There was no way he could do it.

What he could do was transfer a personality, transfer consciousness, transfer cognitive and critical thinking skills. All it would cost was the price of some lowly idiot who didn’t even know he was in hell to begin with.

Except...It worked too well. The face it chose and the voice it chose. The name it insisted on being called. It’s manners and dispositions...he wanted to copy a base personality so it would work as a discovery robot for science but this thing; it felt, it cried, it fell in love, it expressed joy.

It scared Scott

\--

Carlos pulled back from the file, slipping into his body again.

There were so many questions. There was no one to answer them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again to daft for the beta. 
> 
> I'd love to hear what you guys think, please leave a comment. 
> 
> I plan on wrapping this up in a few more chapters.


	11. Hello! memory! where'd you go?

\--This chapter is unbeta'd. If you see anything glaringly wrong please tell me.--

Carlos couldn’t remember any of it. No matter how hard he forced himself to try and think about what happened before this, nothing opened up. The lab beeped in sympathy and sent soft warm trickles of electricity to him as comfort. 

Carlos sat back against the plug and clutched at his head, pulling out the wires that connected him to the lab. “What do I do? What…I’m not just going to let this happen!”

The lab beeped in sympathy, “try calling your boyfriend.” The lab’s synthesized mechanical female voice told him from the speakers. 

“Call…Cecil? Are we dating?”

“You were dating before.”

Carlos stared up at the ceiling in shock “How long was I here before he…he did…this?”

The lab gave him another sympathetic beep that stretched out into a tone. “I do not have exact dates in my register. But” the lab paused “long enough.”

“And I can’t remember any of it?”

“Not if Scott did the job correctly. Which he did.”

“And…what about you? Are you like I am?”

“I suspect so. Though, not by the same hands, and not as clean.”

Carlos ran his hands through his hair and sat down in a slump, the initial panic receding somewhat. “what do I do?”

“I already told you to call Cecil”

Carlos shot the lab a look but dialed the number in his head. He knew it was early for the radio host, but he still hoped Cecil picked up the phone. He didn’t particularly want to talk to Cecil but if the lab said that was the correct plan of action then what other choice did he have?

The phone rang for a long time before Cecil picked up. “Hello this is Cecil?”

“Cecil”

A sigh was heard over the receiver “Hello Carlos”

“We need to talk”

“You know im always willing to talk to you, Carlos”

“I was human, Cecil. What did they do to me?”

There was a long pause on the other end before Cecil gave a very sad “Carlos, come over,” And hung up.

Carlos heard the lab door unlock, and knew the lab wanted him to go. He pulled a lab coat off the wall to cover him, grabbed a power cord, and stepped outside.  
The walk to Cecil’s house was slow and uneventful. It was dusty and hot, just like the desert always was, but also still and quiet in a peaceful and unusual way for Night Vale. 

\--

When he knocked on Cecil’s door he didn’t really know what to expect. He certainly didn’t expect Cecil to slowly open the door and peek his head out, his eyes bleary and red as if he’d been crying. 

He ushered Carlos inside and immediately brought him into a tight hug, his body trembling as he clung to Carlos. “It really is you then, isn’t it?”

Carlos wrapped his arms around Cecil as well, resting his face in the monster’s shoulder. 

“I missed you. I was…wasn’t sure…Carlos what did they do to you?” Cecil stepped back, looking like he was on the verge of tears again. “When I first saw you I thought it was a government mandated hallucination, that’s why I shook your hand it’s the law but…then you showed up at my station and I th-thought no, it can’t be.” His breathing became stiff “you were just as sweet and nice as ever but you didn’t know me so I- I played along. The dates, the gastro pub, it’s like you’ve come back to life and then you’re a robot but you- you-”

Carlos pressed his face to Cecil’s chest as he talked.

“You didn’t know me…” Cecil whispered.

“I know you now” Carlos murmured back into Cecil’s chest.

Cecil manifested everything, the shadows spilling out into the room and the tentacles wrapping around Carlos’s body in a loving embrace. “I’m…I should have told you. But it just hurt, Carlos, to have you back again.”

“how long?” 

“what?”

“how long has it been?”

Cecil paused and thought about the question, pulling Carlos’s head off of his chest to stroke through his synthetic hair. “It’s been a while since you disappeared…no one knew anything. I was convinced I’d never see you again.”

“Tell me about it. Tell me about myself, Cecil, I don’t know anything.” Carlos stared at the man before him “Who was I?”

Cecil gave him a very gentle and sad smile. “You were…Carlos the Scientist. You were my boyfriend, Intelligent, kind, you were…the most perfectly imperfect man I ever knew. You never talked much about your past…I know you had family, friends, but I don’t really know much else. You were always so focused on the future, our future.”

Carlos bowed his head.

“You lived here, with me, I know you don’t remember, but I still have all your things…I couldn’t bear to get rid of them.” Cecil’s voice sounded sorrowful like he had tried, and had failed many times. 

“Why didn’t Scott do anything about this? I know it was him who did this to me why didn’t he anticipate this? He knew I’d find out eventually! It doesn’t even look like he tried to cover anything up!”

“Maybe he didn’t want to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be here anymore. You’ve told me yourself the only way to get out of Night Vale via your company is death or severe injury. Maybe he’s hoping I would do something, or you would find out and do something.”

“Is that why he made me take the bat?”

“What bat?”

“The night of the sandstorm, he made me kill my double with a bat, which is how I found out.”

Cecil looked offended “He made you do what!?”

“Kill my double.”

“Oh, gods above…why would you kill anything that’s so, so, unlike you Carlos?”

“Cecil! It was a protocol I had no choice!”

“Carlos you can ignore the protocols.”

“I- I can’t! It hurts and the code slips and I can’t control it. I don’t have any choice!”

Cecil looked disturbed at this information. “He’s making you do things against your direct will?”

Carlos nodded. 

“Carlos do you remember when I told you that you’re fragile? I told you that because I already lost you once. Mark me, I will not lose you again.”

Carlos smiled softly and rested his head against Cecil’s chest again. The tentacles hefted him up, pulling him into a position that curled in on him. Cecil Sat down and cradled him, holding Carlos’s robotic body close while whispering small affections of love. 

Carlos let out a synthesized sigh and curled up closer. “Cecil, why am I here in the first place?”

“For science of course! What do you mean?” 

“Well…the lab told me everyone else on the team is here because they did something bad, and the company sent them here as a punishment…what…did I do?”

Cecil looked at him for a very intense moment “Well you never told me that before. I have no idea what you did, or anyone else did.” He paused, looking offended “How is my town a punishment, you love it here, I love it here.”

“Well it is a little dangerous,” Carlos laughed.

Cecil huffed, giving him a retort “Only if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“But I’m not a bad person?”

Cecil smiled, “No, no, Not any more than I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for not getting this chapter beta'd and I know its awkward.


	12. Hello Scott.

\--This chapter is Unbeta'd. if you see anything glaringly wrong please tell me.--

Scott was an incredibly maladjusted person. It wasn’t that he liked being mad at everything, it was just that he found being mad so much easier than dealing with things reasonably. 

He could throw weight around and send threats to people who got things done, and eventually things wound up in a way that he found he rather enjoyed. 

Which is why he wasn’t exactly pleased to know his damn robot had left the lab again after he had told it not to. This would require a new protocol. 

He sighed, knowing that since Carlos wasn’t here to receive an audio command he’d have to put it manually into the system. He booted up the lab AI, waiting for the giant computer that encompassed the entire building to turn on. 

The systems warmed up, and the lab sparked to life. 

“Hello Scott”

\--  
Carlos didn’t want to go back. He had sat on the floor with Cecil till his power ran down and Cecil plugged him into the wall. It made Carlos’s skin warm to the touch; if Carlos were human he would feel feverish. Cecil reversed their positions, returning to a human form to sit in Carlos’s lap. 

They talked, about everything and nothing all at once. Cecil tried to tell Carlos who he was to the best of his ability, pointing at things around the room that belonged to Carlos and explaining the story behind them. 

\--

Scott smirked at the computer. “At least you do what I say. Good programming.”

The lab waited.

“I need to manually input a new protocol for Carlos, It seems he’s gotten the bright idea that leaving here is a good thing.”

The lab waited.

Scott tapped his foot. “Open the command script.”

The lab did nothing.

“I said, Open the command script!”

“No.”

\--

It hurt both of them in a way. Carlos because he was so frustrated that there were so many memories, and an entire life he had with Cecil but couldn’t remember. Cecil because the fact he still had all this stuff meant he wasn’t able to cope, and likely never would have. It was a reminder of a life that didn’t exist anymore. Carlos himself was still here, but Cecil’s life with him would never be the same again. Even if they fell back into a rhythm of living there were so many memories that Carlos just didn’t have. 

Cecil quietly voiced this concern to Carlos, “There’s so much you don’t remember…how…are we going to do this? I want to continue. Carlos I want to so badly, but I know that’s not what you need.”

“I don’t remember, no, but that’s why we’ll make new memories, right?” Carlos smiled and cocked his head to the side, “How many people can say they got a second first date?”  
Cecil smiled and leaned his forehead against Carlos’ shoulder.

It would have been a perfect and wonderful moment if Carlos had not lurched upwards and screamed. 

\--

Scott slammed the keyboard into the open position, manually bringing up the command script and getting Carlos’s protocol inventory up. The lab arched a current through the system, forcing the keyboard to snap up again. Scott grit his teeth, and spat at the lab, spinning around and not knowing where to look. 

“Where the fuck are you, damn robot bitch! You can’t do that to me! I’ll take you apart!”

It would have been more dramatic if the floor didn’t immediately have several thousand volts flowing through it.

It is amps, not volts, that will kill a person. Damage and extreme discomfort can come from voltage electrocution, in weaker or elderly persons, heart attacks and heart tremors can occur. Scott was just entering middle age, the lab reasoned he would be fine as soon as he could scrap up the ability to peel himself from the floor. 

\--

Carlos was froze, his protocol inventory open on another computer. It was like having his mind split into two. He shook and slid to the side, He realized Cecil was yelling something at him but he couldn’t understand. It was like back when he didn’t have a language processor, just sounds and pitches. 

There’s no real reason he could figure that having the program open on another system would incapacitate him like this. Cecil shook him and it felt like something was coming off.

\--

The lab closed the program, and put a security pass on the program.

\--

Carlos gasped and shoved Cecil off of him, shaking violently and clutching at his head. 

It was a moment before Carlos could sit back up, blinking bleary.

Cecil stared at him, the question not needing to be asked. 

Carlos answered it for him, “we need…to go to the lab”


	13. Goodbye.

\--this chapter is unbeta'd, if you see anything glaringly wrong please tell me so i can fix it--

The ride to the lab was rough, they got stopped several times by secret police officers congratulating them on their reunion, and also many reminders that Cecil’s plates were about to expire.

When they were able to talk to each other Carlos tried to explain what little he saw when Scott had opened him in two places. Cecil figured that while normal programs could function being open on separate machines, Carlos at the end of the day was still a very rough approximation of a human. There are functions and conditions that didn’t get met, and because he was in and of himself so much more “complex and infinite” (Carlos doubted he was infinite) that maybe he just couldn’t do that.

Carlos didn’t really care why it happened, just so much as it didn’t happen again, or at least not without some sort of warning. 

They pulled into the lab parking lot, getting out of the car and staring at the building. They both could tell there was something incredibly wrong, as the air smelled like smoke and there were nearly palpable electric pulses of something horrible coming out of the lab through the air.

Normally, slipping into his more natural form in public was something Cecil greatly tried to avoid. At the moment he felt like having a few extra limbs certainly wouldn’t hurt anything though, and slipped three tentacles out from beneath his deerskin camisole.

Carlos made an unintentional appreciative boop, and stepped forwards with Cecil into the lab.

\--

Scott, as it turns out, did not take well to being electrocuted by a building. He had risen with singed hair and anger, tossing the nearest work station to the ground and swearing at the lab.

To which the lab responded by once again filling the entire floor with a few thousand volts of electricity.

Unfortunately, there were other things touching the floor besides just Scott. This included lots of expensive and delicate scientific equipment that did not take kindly to large surges of electricity. At the first round, the plugs started smoking, throwing sparks and destroying cords. At the second surge, the outlets burst into flames, equipment was destroyed, thin wires caught fire and the lab started to burn.

\--

The lab didn’t panic, not really. An AI such as the lab doesn’t really understand panic like a human would. Would it? It hoped not. Regardless, The lab sent out a distress signal, which it was immediately rewarded with by Carlos Busting the door down and rushing into the room with Cecil after him. The lab played a celebration noise (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyJcVkazOSw) and stopped the distress signal as fast as it started it. Meaning it hesitated a few moments but ultimately did it in a timely enough fashion. 

“Hello Carlos. Hello Cecil. Welcome back.”

Carlos screeched a dial up tone and started swatting at the fire that had crawled up the wall.

Cecil on the other hand gave the lab a friendly nod and started trying to pat the fires out as well “Oh it’s good to be back.” He gave an unconscious Scott a good kick in the ribs as he passed him. “Would you happen to have a sprinkler system about you? I believe that would make this process much easier.”

“No, Introduction of water to electrical equipment is a fire hazard.”

Carlos screeched again at the absurdity of the statement. He had to back away, the heat started to melt the silicone of his hands. “Cecil! Cecil I- We Can’t put this out!”

“What about the lab?” Cecil called back, using his tentacles and arms to try and pull a burning rolling shelf covered in plastic wrap away from the wall. 

Carlos stared up at the ceiling, artificial chest heaving with artificial breath. 

“You can go, I am everywhere. Temporary malfunctions.” The lab answered, and lifted panels of the floor to herd Cecil and Carlos towards the door. “look for packages. Don’t%%% Keeping the scientists. Keeping the scientists. %. TELL_THEM_I_AM_FINE. %.”

Carlos grabbed Cecil’s arm, pulling him out of the burning building, they both screamed as a beam fell and landed near them. Carlos pushed Cecil out in front of him, shucking off his lab coat which had caught fire at the base. 

\--

The research van pulled up outside and the rest of the lab assistants and scientists started slowly exiting the vehicle, staring at their demolished lab. They all stepped back when Carlos with his whole robotic torso exposed and Cecil with several tentacles flailing about exited the lab screaming.

“Carlos did you set the lab on fire!?” one of them shrieked. 

“What about our stuff!?” yelled another.

Carlos stared at them disbelievingly while Cecil tried to catch his breath.

He didn’t answer and slowly the scientists started milling about, staring at the flaming lab and cursing under their breaths wondering why Night Vale has a ban on fire trucks. Then one of them, a young woman, stated “Hey…this is a breach of contract isn’t it? We can go home.”

The rest turned to look at her and started mumbling their agreements. Whether or not it actually was, no one seemed to know. Carlos reasoned it was likely they’d ever actually read their terms of contract, working for a company that wanted them dead by forcing them into a place like Night Vale with extreme potential of never leaving alive, he couldn’t think he blamed them. He figured probably hadn’t read them either back when he had the chance. 

\--

The firemen finally arrived after about an hour and the building had burnt itself out. They held hands around the blaze, chanting in what Carlos registered as gibberish, and then left. The building was absolutely the same as it had been before they arrived. Cecil looked so relieved though that Carlos didn’t press it.

It wasn’t until the lab team had packed what little stuff they had into a company van and spray painted “VIVA CALIFORNIA FUCKAZ” on the side that Carlos realized Scott had been inside the building. He pulled Cecil to the side and told him.

Cecil didn’t care really; it wasn’t his fault Scott just happened to be unconscious at the time the set itself on fire. If anything, the lab killed him and they were neglectful of his safety. 

Carlos still felt bad about it regardless, and Cecil patted him on the back, taking his arm and wrapping his own around it, pulling him back to Cecil’s apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was fun. thanks for reading. 
> 
> I plan to continue it because that end, while still being an end, is not what i want really. 
> 
> idk
> 
> I know it was bad, but thanks for sticking through it with me <3


	14. BONUS: Hello! sex! sex!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonus NSFW content that people kept asking for.

They were in bed together. It had been about a week since the lab had burned; everyone that worked there had gone in the van. Carlos stayed with Cecil and had started applying for jobs near their apartment. He hoped he would get the open spot at the best buy because he knew his ability to interface with the appliances directly would be more helpful than anything else he could do.

For the moment though, Cecil hung onto his shoulder, sleeping softly as Carlos charged. Cecil’s tentacles were splayed out across the bed, draping off in all directions. The shadow that spilled from his surrounded them, soft and cloying like gentle fabric. 

“Mmm…I love how your eyes glow now.” Cecil whispered after a moment.

“You’re awake?” Carlos replied, rolling over to press their foreheads together.

“I can’t really sleep if I tried, it’s a new moon…I’m…” he paused, shaking his head and gently wrapped some more tentacles around Carlos’s robotic body. “Do you remember what happens on the new moon?”

Carlos did not remember, and shook his head.

“That’s…unfortunate…” Cecil looked away “I’d have liked our second first time to be a little different than this…”

Carlos immediately remembered what Cecil was referring to as his system drew up the memories. “You are talking about your sexual cycle. You’re in heat.”

“Don’t call it that I don’t get heats I’m not a cat,” Cecil huffed. “I-…I do need you though.” He glanced down at Carlos’s crotch as more void was spilling its way out of Cecil’s back.

Carlos laughed, nodding against Cecil’s skin. “You’re warmer than usual.”

“I’d certainly hope so with what’s going on inside me.” Cecil retorted, pulling Carlos on top of himself.

Carlos planted his hands to the sides of Cecil’s head, letting Cecil’s tentacles wrap around his body as his void spilled onto their bed. Their lips pressed against each other’s, delicately chaste at first and then fervently not. Cecil’s warm wet tongue slipped into Carlos’s dry plastic mouth and Cecil let out a disappointed moan, “You don’t taste like you.”

Carlos stopped and looked down at Cecil. “If I’m not me, then what do I taste like?”

Cecil smiled gently, “Oil.”

“No…I meant if I am myself, then I taste like me, regardless of what I am.”

Cecil furrowed his brows in confusion and a tentacle slapped Carlos’s ass, causing the android to beep. “Carlos it doesn’t matter, just kiss me. I shouldn’t have said anything. Do you still have a gag reflex?” Carlos shook his head. “Good” replied Cecil, and brought their mouths together again, sticking his long inhuman tongue far down Carlos’s throat.

Carlos contemplated this for a moment, knowing as a human he wouldn’t have been able to breathe. Cecil was holding back for him all those times, and he seemed so happy now. It made Carlos smile, and he kissed Cecil deeper, wishing he was able to stick his tongue out as well but knowing he couldn’t. Instead he opted to suck on Cecil’s tongue, making the monster moan.

Cecil withdrew his tongue, his own wetness clinging to Carlos’s mouth. He was out of breath, panting and blushing beneath Carlos from so little as a kiss.

“Are you ready? What do I need to do?”

Cecil smiled, grabbing Carlos’s silicone covered hand and guiding it down between his legs. The bundle unfolded and wrapped gently around Carlos’s fingers. A small hole in the middle of them flared open at Carlos’s tender touch and Cecil let out a breathy sigh, nodding for Carlos to trace more inside it.

Carlos could sense the hole was wet, and he knew from past experience that he should be putting a phallic device of his own into it rather soon. He searched his mainframe and came up with no such object and he frowned, stopping his hand as he searched the database again.

Cecil furrowed his brow in frustration. “What’s wrong why did you stop?”

Carlos stared at him “I don’t have one.”

“What.”

“I don’t have one.” Carlos repeated. He stood up, leaving Cecil on the bed and took his pants off, feeling around where a dick would normally protrude in case there was a switch or a button. They both knew that he didn’t have anything in his normal mode, either for inserting or being inserted into. But for some reason they had both just assumed that maybe something would slide out or open up to reveal a phallus. That wasn’t the case.

Cecil gazed at him as Carlos started to panic a little. Slowly the monster slid off the bed, wrapping loving tentacles around Carlos’s waist and pulling him to the side. “I have something I think will work just fine,” He said after calming Carlos down a little. He bent over to rummage under the bed, pulling out storage boxes full of miscellaneous things. Carlos let himself be jostled by void and tentacles as Cecil finally brought out a shoebox, opening the lid and setting it on the bed.

Carlos peered inside and was greeted with a set of surprisingly average looking dildos and a few other sexual objects. Cecil pulled out a belt with some loops and offered it to Carlos. The android looked at it for a moment before realizing it was a strap on harness, and stepped into it, swatting at some of the void to let his legs go so he could pull it on.

Cecil fumbled through the box, examining some of the fake dicks till he found one he was happy with. It was bubblegum pink with very little features other than a few nubs at the tip.

“Why do you have so many of those?” Carlos asked, tightening the harness on his hips.

“I’m very old and I get lonely, Carlos. I had been alone for a while before I met you.”

Carlos smiled a little, sliding the dick through the ring. “It’s just fairly plain is all; I sort of expected something more…experimental.”

Cecil laughed, lying back on the bed again. “Unfortunately those aren’t really…what I like. It’s very tender down there, not much like what you’ve experienced in the past with your own penetration.”

Carlos climbed over him, kissing his neck and letting the tentacles wrap around him again. “I don’t really recall much about that unfortunately. The lab didn’t give me everything, just most things.”

Cecil nodded sadly, bringing his lips to the side of Carlos’s neck and guiding the dildo inside him. Carlos was about to ask about lubricant or preparation but he could feel Cecil’s cloaca opening up to accept the dick, sliding in easily with how wet Cecil was.

Carlos looked down, seeing the pink hook around his green and silver mantle. “It kind of clashes doesn’t it?” Carlos asked.

Cecil laughed, starting to go breathless as Carlos began to rock his hips. “I think you’re beautiful.”

Carlos sped up a little “I could have melted in the fire and you’d still call me beautiful.”

“That’s because you would still be beautiful my, lovely, gorgeous, amazing Carlooos,” Cecil moaned his name, his tendrils around the cloaca hooking around the belt and filling into the space where Carlos’s legs met his hips, pulling him forwards with every thrust. “I-Is this doing anything for you?” Cecil asked after a moment.

Carlos shook his head “not really, but I’m more than glad to know you’re having a good time.”

Cecil frowned, wrapping his legs around Carlos’s waist. “That’s not fair! There has to be something…” and started searching around on Carlos’s back with his hands. “You have a reward/punishment system don’t you?”

Carlos nodded, not entirely understanding why Cecil would want those. “It’s in a panel on my neck, why?”

Cecil flipped it open and immediately jammed down the reward button. Carlos screamed and curled over Cecil, the immediate good feeling too much without a warning. The system was designed to train him for things where he couldn’t connect to the lab to download new protocols. A quick press of the buttons was used to reinforce good behavior or punish bad behavior. They weren’t really supposed to be held down like Cecil was doing.

Carlos shuddered and trembled above Cecil, doing everything he could to not fall on top of his boyfriend. Cecil’s void held Carlos up, let him tremble and shake with the good feeling. Cecil let go of the button and Carlos stared at him, mouth open slightly. Cecil pulled Carlos’s hips in, pressing the button down again and Carlos moaned. Carlos realized what Cecil wanted to do and started setting a rhythm, Cecil pressing the button down with every thrust that Carlos gave him.

Neither of them lasted long after this compromise was reached, Cecil jamming the button down as he came. Both of them moaning each other’s name breathlessly as orgasms shook through both of them.

Carlos fell to the side, void and tentacles keeping him close as fans whirred to life. Cecil tugged him close, nuzzling into Carlos’s chest through his afterglow.

Carlos spoke after a moment, “I- I don’t think that’s what the reward system is for.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Not really…I’m just afraid of breaking it. What if it doesn’t work, or you press the punishment button, or it gets stuck on? There are a lot of complications that could happen.”

“Then we’ll deal with that when we come to it, Carlos. I don’t think anything is going to happen any time soon.”

Carlos let out a synthetic sigh, letting Cecil rest his head on his chest as the void slowly drew back up into his back.

“I guess you’re right.”


End file.
